Stephen Curry

That’s right! WELCOME BACK! It’s been a long, yet eventful offseason. You know the dramas. You know the situations, so no need to go there. You are here for the Top 10, but before I unveil the goods…I like to play hard to get…there are some things I need to do. First and foremost, have to give props to the great and venerable Rudy Gamble, who blessed me with his Excel wizardry. Also, shout out to Viz….Nobody Beats the Viz….who helped me tinker, refine, and make the list what it is. He’s a Jazz fan so guess who got a huge bump? Finally, I’ll give you a brief window into my process. I went through each team individually, mapped how I saw the depth chart playing out, and allocated the 240 minute-per-game pie. The one thing I wanted to do when projecting the players was to weight volume for both FG% and FT%. Therefore, in my projections below, I will use a-FG% and a-FT%, instead of FG% and FT%. I then threw all the players into a list and calculated the Z-score for each statistical category, then added them all up to get my final list. EZ-PZ. Not really, but that’s why I get the big bucks…not really.

Every Wednesday, I will blurb about and reveal more players, culminating in the final release of the entire list, which is 340 deep. I’ll only blurb about the Top 200, though. Hope you enjoy!

This is it. This is the week you have been waiting for all season. The final fantasy week for the majority of leagues has begun and I hope you are fighting for the championship. I’m rooting for you owners, the ones who adapted when DeMarcus Cousins went down, streamed like madmen and secured a playoff spot. For you that were ready to give up when your star-studded backcourt of Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry got injured and you lost your matchup to a 3pt-punt team due to triples, but still scratched and clawed your way to the finals. One more week of hustle and the trophy is yours.

LaMarcus Aldridge must hate Jazz music, because he destroyed the Jazz last night. I know some people might listen to it to put themselves to sleep, but LaMarcus clearly doesn’t understand the complex rhythms or appreciate the skill of the musicians, and LaMarcus must destroy what he does not understand. LaMarcus killed the Jazz last night, going 1-45-9-2-1-3-4 on 19-of-28 shooting and 6-for-8 from the line. Although the game went to OT, LMA has been killing it all year, posting top 20 value. Four quarters and overtime wasn’t enough for Aldridge, because after the game ended, he smashed some Thelonious Monk records and stomped on a picture of Dizzy Gillespie. On a more serious note, I could see Aldridge going in the second round next year, while you most likely got him in the fourth round this year. That’s value.

There were ten games last night so many of your fantasy playoff fates were decided yesterday. This could have been the night that made your dreams come true, or shattered them to tiny pieces. Hopefully, for most of you it was the former…Anyway, let’s dive on in to the Friday Daily Notes!

“ If you play good attack, you win the game, but, if you play good defense you win championships” (Zeljko Obradovic)

Semifinals time. Maybe in rotisserie leagues the results are more fair, but in head-to-head there’s more excitement. If you had Kevin Durant or Gary Harris and are in the semifinals, it will be a difficult endeavor, but that’s h2h fantasy life for you. On the other hand, if your opponent has one of those players, you’re smiling from ear to ear.

Another thing I learned this week (again), is how crucial working the waiver wire is to succeeding in fantasy basketball. Corey Brewer and Buddy Hield were first-round values in the quarter-finals, and Taurean Prince, Maurice Harkless, and Quinn Cook were second-round values.

Here is how the action went down in Week 22 across our 12 RCL Leagues:

The Player Rater is a tool to evaluate the performance of a player with only one number. This is not a perfect tool and will not guarantee victory in fantasy, but this is useful to help improve and evaluate your team.

In each category of scoring, a number is calculated to represent the average total in that category. If a player has the average, his rating in that category is 0.00. The numbers represent how much a player is above or below the average.

If the rating is positive, that player is an above-average fantasy player in that category. If the rating is negative that player is below-average. The sum of all ratings in each category gives us a number (the PR), and then we rank the players accordingly.

I have not included turnovers, as the evaluation in PR is very controversial in my opinion, so if you’re in a league with turnovers, you must keep in mind this.

If you are wondering about the title, just look at the postscript at the end of the article. It’s not basketball related but some things are far greater.

The playoffs have started for most fantasy leagues and I hope your teams are competing in them. May the basketball gods bless you with no injuries to your key players (ahem Stephen Curry) and good percentages to lead you to the championship. If you are instead in a Roto league, like I prefer for the most part, these injuries affect you less but it’s still a good time to focus on the categories that can give you the most points in the standings and shape your team accordingly.

On a completely different subject, as soon as I saw Josh Richardson and James Johnson celebrating after a made triple, I knew I had to include it in the article.

As per usual, let’s check the performance from last week’s suggested players, but before that, an extra shout out to my man Nemanja Bjelica, who I mentioned 2 weeks ago and is straight carrying my teams for the past weeks (ranked 18th during this period). Larry Nance Jr. has taken full advantage of the starting role in Cleveland, with three double-doubles in his last 5 games and will maintain this production for as long as Tristan Thompson is sidelined. On the other hand, Jakob Poeltl’s impressive defensive numbers faded this week as he averaged only 1.0 block after going for 2.7 per game during the previous two weeks. Finally, Skal Labissiere had two solid games before going down with a minor injury, while Marcin Gortat and Al-Farouq Aminu proved good drop calls as they had at best forgettable performances.

Devin Booker had yet another great scoring performance against the Thunder on Friday night. 6-39-6-8-0-1-5, shooting 16-of-28 from the field in 39 minutes. He also crossed the 4,000 point threshold, becoming the third-youngest player to do so, behind LeBron and KD. Pretty remarkable for a guy that doesn’t get that much attention on a terrible Suns team and this great performance still wasn’t enough to beat OKC last night…Anyway it was another big slate of games on Friday and crunch time is approaching for a lot of fantasy teams, so let’s jump in to the daily notes! Here’s what went down last night in fantasy basketball:

The Player Rater is a tool to evaluate the performance of a player with only one number. This is not a perfect tool and will not guarantee victory in fantasy, but this is useful to help improve and evaluate your team.

In each category of scoring, a number is calculated to represent the average total in that category. If a player has the average, his rating in that category is 0.00. The numbers represent how much a player is above or below the average.

If the rating is positive, that player is an above-average fantasy player in that category. If the rating is negative that player is below-average. The sum of all ratings in each category gives us a number (the PR), and then we rank the players accordingly.

I have not included turnovers, as the evaluation in PR is very controversial in my opinion, so if you’re in a league with turnovers, you must keep in mind this.

“ Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” (Aaron Levenstein)

There are two weeks left in the regular season for fantasy. With the injury to Jimmy Butler, joining the club of DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, Kristaps Porzingis, and Kawhi Leonard, this year seems like an elimination game. On the other hand, Anthony Davis has been video game-esque. Over the last five games, he’s averaging 42.3 pts, 14.8 rebs, 3.8 stls, and 3.0 blks.

Here is how the action went down in Week 18 & 19 across our 12 RCL Leagues:

Last night it was obvious that the All-Star break did a lot of bodies good. There were some huge, I mean massive, fantasy lines last night. Some of the juiciest slash we have seen all season.

The Sixers grab the lead because of their two young stars that have #TrustTheProcess perpetually trending on (anti) social media. Joel Embiid returned from his first of many All-Star appearances with a stat line prettier than Fergie’s angelic voice. 11-of-17 from the floor, including 3-for-3 from deep and 5-for-8 from the line (the only ugly part), 30 points, 13 boards, 5 assists, 3 steals, and 4 blocks with only 1 turnover in 34 minutes. When talking about future number one overall fantasy picks, I rarely hear Embiid’s name mentioned. Now that he is playing in back-to-backs and through minor injuries, I have a feeling that this will change by the end of the season.

His partner in crime, Ben Simmons, would have grabbed the headline if not for Embiid’s epic slash. Simmons finished with: 0 (no surprise)/32/7/11/1/1 including the game winning shot. He did hit only 6-of-11 free throws, however, which along with his lack of an outside shot will continue to keep him out of the first round of fantasy drafts and is probably what kept him out of the All-Star game this year (something tells me this will change next season).